Could someone give me the plain English version of what it is EXACTLY that we are "mining" for ?I understand we are processing " transactions" but what is it that we find that " solves " a block and finishes it. ?

Consider every transaction as the text "I from my wallet with address XXXX am sending to person with wallet YYYY the amount of ZZZZ BTC, which I am signing with my electronic signature for that wallet"Now we all put a list of such transactions in a list and each one of us is signing that list with his own electronic signature by adding a transaction that states: "I confirm that I have checked all the transactions listed at date DDDD and there are no double spends - for which I will be rewarded 25 BTC" ... the one who is lucky that by applying his signature produces a result that starts with more zeroes than required from the network difficulty is the winner to 'solve' the block and is rewarded for that.

We are 'mining' the reward for 'solving' a block by signing it with our signature and the time we did that

Hi need some opinion.Seems like the pool is changing the difficulty ad hoc, why? Is that correct behavior?Hardware is Bitfurry 45GH/s and I get difficulty 1024? Is this something I need to worry?http://i59.tinypic.com/2nkjswp.png

Your output seems to be similar to mine, At the top the Diff is set to 19.7G this is the current difficulty, then each item in the list shows a different Diff such as 15/10 (I have no idea what this means), the difficulty changed to 1024 is I think a message showing that for some reason the difficulty of the work sent to you has been reset, this does not happen very often for me but it may be a sign that your internet connection is not responding quickly enough so the pool is sending you easier work so you can catch up (but this is just a guess).

Hopefully someone with more experience will confirm the reason for this.

I mine at a very slow rate. I have the privilege of free electricity and bought some mining hardware months ago. This privilege is running out and I wanted to get my last payout and leave the mining world. I got a mining contract of 3.3TH for 3hrs so that I could reach the threshold for a payout and then I was going to pack my bags and go. The block solved in this time was invalid which is just shit luck, but what I can't understand is why my BTC reward was so low while I had a (relative to my usual) massive share count.

I mine at a very slow rate. I have the privilege of free electricity and bought some mining hardware months ago. This privilege is running out and I wanted to get my last payout and leave the mining world. I got a mining contract of 3.3TH for 3hrs so that I could reach the threshold for a payout and then I was going to pack my bags and go. The block solved in this time was invalid which is just shit luck, but what I can't understand is why my BTC reward was so low while I had a (relative to my usual) massive share count.

Is there anyone who could clear up the reason for this?

Best,Seamus

My first guess would be that your mining contract expired at some point before that block was resolved and that at that point you went back to your regular mining pace. when the reward was computed on the massive loss of your mining power that those shares were not considered, and that the reward that you would have recieved (if the block had not gone invalid) was based on your lesser hashing rate that would have been brought back online when your contract expired. But this is only my opinion, and there are many more experienced miners on this thread that will surely chime in to correct me if necessary.

^That sounds about right. This is a Score based pool that has vardiff. This is also another great example of why pool hopping doesn't work. When u come and go, you don't get fully invested for a full payout, if any at all. I feel for your loss on that contract.

^That sounds about right. This is a PPLNS pool that has vardiff. This is also a great example of why pool hopping doesn't work. When u come and go, you don't get fully invested for a full payout, if any at all.

One thing is that when the new asics come out, a lot of the old ones get unplugged. I have a room full of unplugged cubes, Klondikes, little singles and s1's. I unplugged as I got the new generation miners. Some of the old ghs does disappear, so that helps a little. But it will eventually get to the point where my mining will not make a profit.

anyone notice that there is a 10% discrepancy between the number of shares their miner gets accepted and the % of BTC allocated?

In particular block 315196 : I mined 0.0030% (big woooo!) of the total shares for that block but only got 0.0027% of the BTC for it! And I've checked that I was mining for full amount of time so I don't think the back ended loading can account for it!!!

. . . . and another thing - if all us pool miners set our payout trigger to the minimum will that increase the number of Bitcoin transactions, and therefore increase the number of blocks being processed and therefore ultimately increase the reward we get for mining!!!!!!!

anyone notice that there is a 10% discrepancy between the number of shares their miner gets accepted and the % of BTC allocated?

In particular block 315196 : I mined 0.0030% (big woooo!) of the total shares for that block but only got 0.0027% of the BTC for it! And I've checked that I was mining for full amount of time so I don't think the back ended loading can account for it!!!

. . . . and another thing - if all us pool miners set our payout trigger to the minimum will that increase the number of Bitcoin transactions, and therefore increase the number of blocks being processed and therefore ultimately increase the reward we get for mining!!!!!!!

anyone notice that there is a 10% discrepancy between the number of shares their miner gets accepted and the % of BTC allocated?

In particular block 315196 : I mined 0.0030% (big woooo!) of the total shares for that block but only got 0.0027% of the BTC for it! And I've checked that I was mining for full amount of time so I don't think the back ended loading can account for it!!!

. . . . and another thing - if all us pool miners set our payout trigger to the minimum will that increase the number of Bitcoin transactions, and therefore increase the number of blocks being processed and therefore ultimately increase the reward we get for mining!!!!!!!

could that be the 2% pool fee you see missing?

block 315196 difference was more like 10%!!!!

When does Slush take his share? I thought it was when payment is made into my wallet.